886 new engineering colleges, 1084 B-schools on cards

MUMBAI: A common wisecrack among engineering aspirants in Andhra Pradesh is that every second building in the state is an engineering college. It may cease to be a joke when institutes dishing out management and engineering degrees start mushrooming all over the country.

Global depression may have taken the wind out of campus placements but the rush for starting professional institutions is at an alltime high. Data from the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) shows that the dash to start professional colleges is more pronounced when it comes to engineering and management as compared to other streams like pharmacy, hotel management and catering technology or architecture.

AICTE has received 886 applications for starting engineering colleges and 1,084 applications for new management institutes. Five states ��� Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala ��� account for 69% of engineering graduates, implying that they also have most of India���s engineering colleges.